unboxing the life of an introverted girl

Dessert Laboratory Hongdae (디저트연구소 홍대점)

It's pretty late in August, and I'm quite sorry that I haven't updated for the past 3 weeks.

I just recently got back from a 2-week long vacation in Seoul, South Korea with my friend Yuki! Over the course of our vacation, we visited quite a number of places that are both famous among tourists and locals alike.

As most of you know, Korea is famous for it's cafe culture, there are probably thousands and thousands of cafes in Seoul alone–both franchise and small cafes alike. Though Yuki and I visited several franchise cafes, today I'll be blogging about one of the smaller (but more famous) cafes that we visited while in Seoul–Dessert Laboratory(or in Korean, 디저트 연구소)!

Dessert Laboratory, as it's name suggests is famous for making "experimental" and almost out-of-this-world desserts. The desserts that they create are very creative, and usually have no relation whatsoever to the shape that they take.

It was actually quite late in the evening when we visited (Yuki and I came from Edae in the morning, and decided to skip on dinner since we ate pretty heavily in the afternoon), so the lemon (passionfruit tart) was already all sold out. There were also only a couple of peaches left, so we rushed to secure one of our own.

The prices of the items on the menu aren't bad, the coffee ranges from KRW3000-7000 (around PHP 150 to 350), which is pretty much the standard pricing of non-franchise coffee shops in Seoul. As mentioned previously, all of the pastries are priced at KRW9000 (PHP 450) each, and although it's a bit pricey, I can assure that each of them are worth the price tag!

Since it was the one that we were most interested in, we ordered the Peach! The peach was also what pushed us to head to the cafe in the first place for two very different reasons: 1) I love peaches and 2) Yuki loves cheesecake. We also ordered an americano because Yuki is lactose-intolerant and can't deal with coffee that contains milk anymore (unless it's soy or almond milk).

The peach actually comes with an instruction or "how-to-eat" card, possibly because there have been experiences where customers had allergies, or ate the inedible portions of the cheesecake.

Overall, I really really enjoyed the cheesecake! The texture was a lot smoother than your usual cheesecake, the cake itself wasn't cloyingly sweet so that you could eat it together with the white chocolate and the raspberry sauce without getting a toothache. The best part, however, is the raspberry sauce! It compliments the cake well, and gives it the acidity and new "dimension" that it needs.

The cake itself is not only a sight to behold, but it's also absolutely delicious–so delicious that I would definitely come back again and again just to eat this cake.